Why North Carolina became the NCAA Tournament's most controversial team

North Carolina probably won't become champions of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Yet shortly after the 68-team bracket was unveiled Sunday, it had already earned the title of the tournament's most talked-about team.

With six national championships, the Tar Heels are one of college basketball's most storied programs. But this was not one of their vintage seasons. At 22-13 they had produced one of the country's most polarizing résumés because of their 1-12 record against the most valuable opponents on their schedule — what the NCAA calls “Quadrant 1,” which values beating highly rated teams, particularly on the road.

North Carolina went 8-0 in “Quad 2” games and played a schedule ranked the nation’s 25th-toughest, per ESPN ratings. Because North Carolina did not win the ACC Tournament, it did not earn an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament, and its fate rested on its worthiness in the estimation of the NCAA Tournament's selection committee.

That committee is chaired by Bubba Cunningham, North Carolina's athletic director. And when North Carolina was selected Sunday as the last team to make the bracket, it instantly created controversy as teams such as West Virginia, Ohio State, Boise State and Indiana — among the first four left out — questioned what separated the Tar Heels.

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Did North Carolina earn an advantage because its athletic director chaired the committee?

Keith Gill, the selection committee's vice chair, told CBS after the bracket was announced that committee policies "require the AD of any school to recuse themselves and actually leave the room for those discussions and they're not allowed to participate in the vote, as well."

Said Cunningham: "I was not in the room for any of that."

Gill said North Carolina won its spot after a "contingency vote" taken Saturday night that hinged on the outcome of Sunday's American Athletic Conference championship game between Memphis and UAB. A win by Memphis, the favorite, would have kept the conference at one bid, as expected, and allowed North Carolina to remain in. But had UAB won in an upset and earned an automatic berth, the AAC would have earned two berths — Memphis and UAB — and pushed out North Carolina.

"Memphis won, and that put North Carolina in the field," Gill said.

The explanation did not stop debate over whether North Carolina deserved an at-large bid, nor did it stop discussion about the optics of the last team's having its athletic director chair the selection committee, despite the assurances that all policies for impartiality were followed. The athletic director at West Virginia called it a "terrible tragedy" that the Mountaineers were the first team left out, posting on X that "our resume was better than several teams in the field."

Against "Quad 1" competition, the first four teams left out all had favorable records compared with North Carolina. West Virginia was 6-10, Ohio State was 6-11, Indiana was 4-13, and Boise State was 3-6.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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